Tuesday, February 05, 2008

You may want to grab your can of Lysol before proceeding to read any further.

Go ahead, I'll wait. This is gonna be a little gross too.

It's possible that all of the germs and nast that have plagued our house for the past two days could potentially leak out over my computer monitor to yours and it's better to be safe than sorry.

So, about this nast and infestation of germs... The kids' babysitter, Nancy, called me at work on Monday morning to tell me that Elaina had thrown up. She thought maybe it was a random and isolated incident and don't worry, she just wanted me to know. Thirty minutes pass and another call, another throw up. This time I turn in my sick slip to leave work to pick up my sick baby and my Lincoln. I walk in to find Elaina sleeping soundly in Nancy's arms and dressed in her 4th outift of the day because she had soiled the previous three.

We barely make it in the door at our house and Elaina is puking again. I made her a nest in her little bed in the living room which will be her refuge for the day. From noon on, Elaina proceeds to throw up everything that goes in her. We had no luck with water, pedailite or even Sprite. Worried about dehydration before it's too late, I call the pediatricians office to see what else they can offer. It turns out that they were just as concerned and called in a suppositry to the pharmacy. The suppository was to suppress her nausea and allow her then to be able to keep water and food down to be absorbed. The timing was great as Eric was able to pick it up on his way home from work and prevented me from packing up the kids, including the thrower-upper and driving to the drug store.

Within 2 hours of her medication (which she was surprisingly good about allowing) she began to drink and keep down a water- pedialite mixture and was beginning to actually sit up for longer than 3 minutes. At no point did she run a fever and we put potty training on the side much of the day (since she was practically a limp noodle already) to get a good wet-diaper count. Even in her sickness, her eyes perked up when let her know that she was going to get to eat a popsicle for dinner tonight. It was to be the second popsicle of the day and this one, she managed to keep down.

As for me, I started to get a splitting headache about the middle of the day and my trusty, old Alleve was barely making a dent in the pain. I prepared dinner for Eric and myself and had to let him enjoy it without me since I had no appetite and no choice, but to lie down. Eric took his shift with the kids for the next two hours and got both kids tucked into bed. I peeled myself out of bed and just as I sat down to catch up on some blogs, I hear Lincoln upstairs begin to scream and cry. He had just gotten sick all over himself. Eric got him into the bathtub while I changed his bedding and thought myself to be so smart to have registered for 2 crib mattress pad covers back when Elaina was born.

Over the next hour, Lincoln got sick 3 more times. Eric made me aware that his stomach was turning and he wasn't feeling good. And I wondered what far-off island paradise I could catch a plane to at midnight. Oh, here's the best part I forgot to mention. Eric was actually scheduled to teach a training class for work tonight and wasn't expected to be home until after 10:00. It got cancelled. Can you believe the luck? The timing? Thank God for small, in this case, big favors! I told Eric that if I was home alone with both of these vomit machines, I mean, children, I would have beat him for not being there to help. He would have had to pick me off the floor first, but I would have beat him nonetheless.

Much of the night was a blur as I bounced from one crying, sick child's room to the next and finally ended with Lincoln and I waking up together on the sofa downstairs. Eric woke next to Elaina in her bed next to her latest throw-up. And then we both called off work.

So here we are. Today. The very long end of a very long today. Elaina was able to take in fluids and began to eat just before noon. Everything stayed down. (2 suppositories later, mind you) Lincoln got his vomiting out of the way last night and saved his diarrhea for today. Approximately 5 rounds. And both kids began to feel better. My poor sick husband drug himself from bed mid- afternoon and helped as much as he could despite feeling like he'd been run over by a truck. As for me, I realized that I was the only one who had gotten the flu shot and stayed immune to the plague. Last season, Lincoln had croup and colds and snot too much to throw in another shot and Eric hardly ever gets sick and I guess that I just put too much faith in Elaina just being lucky not to get it that I never drug her in for a shot either. At the start of flu season, 2008, I think it's safe to say that we'll be making it a family affair to go get our flu shots together! This sucked!

(And by the way, my spell check isn't working either and I'm not even able to load any pictures now. Sounds like the my computer is infected. Hope everyone else is staying healthy!)

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Welcome Comments:

I'm glad to hear that everyone is getting back to normal. Once you have a really terrible bout of the flu, you never want to go without a flu shot again. Your Dad and I always get a flu shot. Grandma H.